Roofing shingle strippers have heretofore been of two main types. The first type is a manual stripper approximating the size of a spade-type shovel having serrations at the leading edge of the shovel for prying roofing nails from plywood boards. Such a stripper is shown at U.S. Pat. No. 4,203,210, issued May 20, 1980. Another shingle stripper is found in U.S. Pat. No. 4,324,042, issued Apr. 13, 1982, which includes a device shaped similar to a straight hoe with a chisel edge and a tab along one side of the chisel edge. A hydraulically operated shingle stripper having a spade type distal working end is shown at U.S. Pat. No. 4,691,439 issued Sep. 8, 1987.
The second type of stripper is larger and generally motor-driven. Such shingle strippers are shown at U.S. Pat. No. 4,091,535, issued May 30, 1980 and U.S. Pat. No. 5,009,131, issued Apr. 23, 1991. These motor-driven machines tend to be larger than the aforementioned manually operable strippers, and they include vibrating or oscillating front teeth with drives similar to those found in a hair clipper apparatus or in garden shears, It is an object of the present invention to provide a new and improved manually operable roofing shingle and tar paper stripper which is capable of removing shingles from a roof at a rate compatible with existing power operated devices.